This summer’s water rationing has been told as one story — on this site too: the Carraízo reservoir, the Sergio Cuevas plant in Trujillo Alto and its two zones, two days on and two days off. There was a second plan, and it started first. On Monday, AAA’s president said it had ended — two weeks ago, with no public announcement.
“En estas últimas semanas no ha sido necesaria la producción de agua en esa planta porque el sistema de Acueducto tiene la capacidad de poder suplir actualmente el área de servicio,” Luis R. González Delgado said on Radio Isla’s Pega’os en la Mañana on September 21 — in recent weeks the plant has not been needed, because the system can supply the area. He dated the decision to “hace dos semanas,” after heavy rain in the El Yunque area, and said the mayors had been informed.
The mayors say they were not. Loíza mayor Julia Nazario told Radio Isla she was not informed, and that the end of rationing has not meant the end of the problem: “hay noches que no nos están llevando el agua como era de costumbre… seguimos con bajas presiones” — some nights the water still does not come, and pressure is still low. Río Grande mayor Ángel González Damudt said the town had simply assumed it: “Nadie dijo que se suspendió ni nada. Nosotros por default lo dimos que se había acabado.”
A plan that was never on the list
The east-side plan ran on the Guzmán Arriba filtration plant in Río Grande, which serves sectors of Río Grande and Canóvanas from its own small dam rather than from Carraízo; the Río Grande mayor tied Loíza’s problems to a second plant, Yunque, which the two towns share. The plan was already in force on July 20, more than two weeks before the metro rotation began: at a government drought meeting that day, González Delgado said the plant “continúa operando bajo un plan de interrupciones programadas,” as Radio Isla reported. On August 27, the Río Grande mayor told the station that more than 800 customers in the upper Guzmán area had gone twelve straight days with no water at all — “estábamos en un racionamiento de 48 horas… pero hace más de 12 días que la planta no distribuye nada para este sector.” On August 17, Nazario said half of Loíza was under rationing and the other half had gone 18 days straight without service.
None of it appears where AAA publishes its plans. The utility’s page for scheduled-interruption plans lists one plan today, Sergio Cuevas, and none of the releases on its press page mentions Guzmán Arriba.
The plants kept failing
A week after the rationing ended, by AAA’s account, its own posts on X recorded a run of breakdowns at the east side’s plants:
| When | Plant | What AAA reported |
|---|---|---|
| Sept. 14, 7:35 p.m. | Canóvanas filtration plant | Out of operation: too little raw water at its dam. Canóvanas and Loíza customers could see low pressure or interruptions. No restoration notice has followed. |
| Sept. 16, morning | Cubuy (Canóvanas) | Broken outlet pipe toward sector Las 400; repaired that afternoon. |
| Sept. 16, 8:55 p.m. | Guzmán Arriba (Río Grande) | Out of operation: dam blocked after rain. Hoyo, Maga, Medina and Palmasola affected; restored the next morning. |
| Sept. 17, 6:55 a.m. | Cubuy (Canóvanas) | Stopped: raw-water intake blocked; running again by 9:47 a.m. |
Both failures are the ones AAA itself named: too little raw water at a dam in the drought, and a dam blocked once the rain arrived.
Two plans, neither closed
The metro rotation has its own loose end. The Governor announced a pause on September 1, for what was described as 48 to 72 hours; AAA has not cancelled it, has not resumed it, and its most recent word on it — a September 10 post — says only that it “permanece en pausa.” The Sergio Cuevas plan is still published.
What is not known: when the Guzmán Arriba plan started, which sectors it covered, and on what day it ended. AAA has not published any of it.
Following the water story
- The water board carries both plans: the Sergio Cuevas rotation, and the east-side systems this report covers, each with its sources.
- Find your sector — the metro plan’s Zone 1 and Zone 2 lists, straight from AAA’s plan document. Canóvanas and Loíza appear there too, but those sectors are only the part of each town served by Sergio Cuevas.
- The Daily Water Watch (September 22’s edition) reads the reservoirs every morning, and the Sunday Water Week in Review puts the week together.
- How the metro rationing began — our August 7 explainer on the Sergio Cuevas plan.
Reporting by Radio Isla; plant notices from AAA’s posts on X; the metro plan from AAA’s published plan document.